Prince Harry backs army cadets charity walk in Powys

Prince Harry visted the cadets who were training at Cwrt Y Gollen in the Brecon Beacons

Prince Harry stopped to sign the plaster cast of a teenager with a broken arm, as he met cadets in Powys preparing for a charity trip to Africa.

The cadets were taking part in a 25km walk in the Black Mountains, ahead of a trip to Lesotho, Africa, to volunteer with the prince's charity Sentebale.

Charlotte Wilkinson-Burnett, 17, asked the prince to sign her cast.

She had broken her wrist playing hockey but now said she would keep the autograph as a souvenir.

The prince had signed "Get well soon, Harry" for Charlotte, who is in the Air Training Corps and from Barrow-upon-Soar, Leicestershire.

Charlotte Wilkinson-Burnett gets her cast signed

She is due to have the cast removed next month but said: "I'm keeping it now, I'm putting it in a glass case. They are not going to cut this cast off me."

Charlotte added: "Meeting Harry makes us all want to get out there to make a change."

The prince met cadets on the final leg of the walk back to their base near Crickhowell in the Brecon Beacons and he was presented with a commemorative plaque.

Sixty youngsters will go to Africa in August for three weeks, trekking through the Drakensburg mountains, making tours of military sites and working on Sentebale development projects, helping to build and paint schools.

The prince, who was in the army branch of the cadets at Eton, said he was "truly honoured" to be patron of the expedition.

He told them: "You will really enjoy it, it will be a hell of an adventure."

"Once you have met them your lives will be very, very different because you will have an understanding you never thought you would of the way people have to live out there."

He added that they would enjoy "a bit of hard labour, a bit of digging, a bit of baby cradling for the girls and maybe the boys."

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